Peter Rhodes: Chucking out the nurses

"URANUS will be shaking things up." Grim outlook for us Taureans this week, according to the Sunday Times.

LET us hope yesterday's warning by the Royal College of Nursing is just another harmless, overblown bit of sabre-rattling in the unending spat between trade unions and governments. Because if it is not, it proves we are governed by idiots. Is Whitehall genuinely incapable of tightening up UK immigration laws without including a bizarre clause to chuck out non-EU workers in the NHS earning less than £35,000 a year? Expelling vital health workers was never what the electorate wanted. It was not what any sane MP wanted. So how did it end up in law?

AS the 200th anniversary of the Battle of Waterloo passes into history, it is worth recalling that the battle could have been a lot shorter. During the fighting, a British artillery commander told the Duke of Wellington that he had a clear view of Napoleon and reckoned he could kill him with cannon fire. Wellington was horrified at the idea, replying: "No! I'll not allow it. It is not the business of commanders to be firing upon one another." Some pundits believe Wellington felt Napoleon had to be properly defeated on the battlefield for his charisma to be finally destroyed. Modern commanders take the opposite view. If Waterloo happened today, the French dictator would probably be eliminated by a drone operated by a plump, gum-chewing American several thousand miles away.

WHEN our political leaders announce that they have negotiated the Palace of Westminster contract down to £5,000 million, they will expect us to fall to our knees in admiration and thankfulness. And we probably will.

AS Scotland endures its coldest June for decades, one correspondent emails: "Gee I am so glad to have paid all these green taxes and seen my countryside ruined by wind turbines to help defeat global warming. Looks like we have it on the run." Amid all the dampness, you have to admire such dryness.